Film review: Biutiful (Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu)

After widening his view on the entire world in Babel, Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu goes back into close-up mode in his new film Biutiful. It tells the story of Uxbal, a somewhat shady Barcelona man who makes his money renting out illegal workers and managing illegal businesses such as those selling bags to tourists in Barcelona's thoroughly renovated old port. Uxbal has a daughter and a son who he tries to keep from her junkie mother and can contact the dead.

Far from the sights and the tourist hotspots, his is a Barcelona in grey, pale light, the browns and yellows of which are not warm, just dirty. The heat is not comforting but stifling. It's the underbelly of paradise, raw, relentless, unforgiving. Javier Bardem plays him with littlemore than one expression in hin face, a man turned to stone, am man whose efficiency has taken over his entire being. Even when he is with his children who he loves unreservedly, he struggles to shed the role he has come to play and only slowly and with some pain opens up.

At some point, Uxbal learns he has terminal cancer and only weeks to live. He tries to repair some of the damagehe has caused and finds himself creating een more and much worse damage in the progress. the film follows his fight between managing business and becoming human again, the camera always close to his face. Trying to repair his family and aiding the wife of one of his deported workers who in the end comes to care for him in his last days, he seeks redemption. It is one of the film's strengths to not answer the question whether he finds it.

González Iñárritu does not shy away from symbolism (the growing and receding numbers of moths on the ceiling - or are they dark, bat-like butterflies?) and his paranormal talent rather ttakes away from the films density rather than adding to it. The film moves along slowly, too slowly for its 2.5 hours running time, as it repeats the same shots of Uxbal's pained face, as little development takes place, as his descent becomes ever more predictable. A heavy weight holds the film down, allowing little light to enter and threatening to bury the few lighter, more hopeful scenes (such as those with his daughter opening and ending the film) under tons of lead.

Slowly, but unrelenting, pessimism invades and conquers every corner, so that the message of hope at the film's end goes almost unnoticed. A somewhat lighter touch would have been called for to make this film a little less tiring and a little more moving.